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Icrontic presents: Arcade Madness—Doctor J’s Revenge

Icrontic presents: Arcade Madness—Doctor J’s Revenge

Back in the days of yore, the Icrontic forum had a built-in arcade. In this arcade was Chopper Challenge.

At first, it was a fun diversion. The mechanic was so simple that anyone could enjoy it, and friendly competition heated up. The scoreboards climbed higher and higher. First place was traded gleefully between several people.

Then, the skies grew dark. The scores climbed ever upward. They became absurd. Casual players stopped. They couldn’t handle the rivalries and smacktalking as the play became fierce. In the end, there were two people left—and they became…

Nemeses.

chopper-1

chopper-2

chopper-3

chopper-5

chopper-6

chopper-4

chopper-7

chopper-8

chopper-9

chopper-10

chopper-11

chopper-13

chopper-12

This is a true story: resident Icrontic mad scientist and hardware hacker, Doctor J, ended up building a custom controller just for Chopper Challenge.

He took an old 8-bit Atari controller called the Mindscape PowerPlayer, a one-hand joystick with a single trigger. He wired it to a PS2 mouse, and used it as a simpler way to “Click to go up”. I tried this device myself, and even though it seems silly, the mechanic of “pull trigger” instead of “push mouse button” to go up is more intuitive and just feels better. My scores improved with his ugly contraption.

Even more importantly, Doctor J was able to defeat the wily Cyclonite.

To be continued…?

Comments

  1. NiGHTS
    NiGHTS dot, dot, dot.
  2. Thrax
    Thrax This is a triumph.
  3. Winfrey
  4. GnomeQueen
    GnomeQueen This is pretty great.
  5. UPSLynx
    UPSLynx I hate that I didn't discover Icrontic until early 2008.

    So many stories I must learn that I missed...

    This is awesome. What happened to the arcade?
  6. Linc
    Linc Lynx, I turned it off a while back and eventually uninstalled it. It wasn't used much after the first 4 months or so and was just "one more thing" to have installed in vBulletin.
  7. UPSLynx
    UPSLynx Weezer told me today that the arcade was up when we joined the forums.. tho I don't recall it at all. Maybe it's just the many revisions I've seen, it all blurs together.

    ...I'm starting to think that I remember the arcade. But I'm wondering if I'm creating that memory in my head because we're talking about it...

    argh
  8. Gate28
    Gate28 I joined late '07 and remember the arcade quite well, as it was the only place I could find Tetris that wasnt stopped by my school's web filter.
  9. portzebie I giggled. No lie.
  10. Zuntar
    Zuntar GO GO GO GO!!!!!
  11. Cyclonite
    Cyclonite I'm currently working on a time machine so I can go back and smack Doctor J in the head just before he beats my score...
  12. primesuspect
    primesuspect Don't make me make another comic, plz.

    Although that would make a great sequel....
  13. primesuspect
  14. Cyclonite
    Cyclonite Omg, haha! I forgot about this.
  15. primesuspect
  16. primesuspect
    primesuspect And, by the way, @J's high score of 4878 still stands...
  17. Sonorous
    Sonorous Pretty sure if you were to take an average of my scores it would be around 40. Awful is defined in the dictionary as "Sonorous playing Chopper Challenge" ;D
  18. Cyclonite
    Cyclonite
    And, by the way, @J's high score of 4878 still stands...
    Hate.

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